


A Hero and a Boxer

by HanaHimus



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Shin Megami Tensei: if...
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tiger & Bunny Fusion, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 08:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16082174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HanaHimus/pseuds/HanaHimus
Summary: Akira doesn't like heroes, Naoki is a hero. They become friends.





	A Hero and a Boxer

**Author's Note:**

> More Tiger & Bunny AU?? Yeah. There's another fic for this AU but it doesn't matter at all to this fic tho so. Yeah.

 

**Section 1: Hate**

Akira Miyamoto wasn’t a fan of heroes, in fact, he hated them. They were all a bunch of showoffs, taking up airtime and shoving their stupid sponsor covered hero suits in everyone’s faces… As far as he could tell, they didn’t actually care about saving people… How annoying.

If there was one he hated more than the others, though, it was that lousy King of Heroes. He didn’t even act like he wasn’t hogging the spotlight when he popped up and the way he acted? Wasn’t the kinda thing most would expect from a hero, at least Akira wouldn’t.

...God, just thinking about it pissed him off. There was no room for things like heroes in his life. All he needed to worry about was performing well enough in the ring to bring home a paycheck. As long as that all worked out, it was fine.

And seeing as he was about to go into the ring, his coach trying to hype him up for the fight, he knew he needed to shift his focus. Back to the usual routine of putting up a fight and hopefully coming out on top…

That’s when that usual routine was shattered by the sound of screams and doors breaking. Criminals, both NEXT and normal humans poured in, threatening people to the ground with their powers and guns. Akira dropped to his knees, if only for the sake of the old man next to him, when one pointed their gun at them.

“So you’re the star of tonight’s show, aren’t you?” The person snickered, pushing the pistol against Akira’s temple. “Sure you’ll be good if you want any chance of this show happening.”

“I don’t really care. There’s future matches.” He frowned up at them, mildly annoyed at best. “Get that gun away from me.”

They pressed it against him harder. “What makes you think you can talk to me like that, huh?! You’re the hostage here!”

Akira frowned, his eyes glowing blue as he swung up a now clawed hand at the crook’s face. They stumbled back with a confused yell, just long enough for Akira to stand and try to make for the exit. Too bad for him he didn’t make it far before another criminal had their gun aimed right at him.

They pulled the trigger and all Akira could do was flinch as he awaited death. No way he would be able to block that or move out of the way--

That’s when he felt himself get lifted off his feet and carried off faster than was humanly possible. It took a second to register what was happening and who was holding him… He’d just been saved by the hero he hated the most.

“Wh-”

Before he could even form a full sentence, he was outside the center, placed safely behind a police barricade. The stupid hero was smiling at him (no, more grinning at him) and Akira wanted to punch it right off his face. That would just lead to him being dogpiled by the police, though, not a good idea.

“Leave the hero work to the heroes in the future.” As he spoke, Akira felt himself just hating him even more. “Just because you’re a NEXT...”

“I just didn’t want a gun pointed at my head.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to be a hero… The last thing I’d want is to be anything like you guys.”

They stared at each other for just a moment before the King of Heroes remembered that he had a time limit on his powers. He dashed off, likely to try and wrack up more points, and Akira sighed. No reason to stick around, the match was gonna end up cancelled or delayed, after all.

Time to go home.

 

**Section 2: Interest**

Naoki had been curious about the guy he’d saved from a boxing match turned hostage situation for a while now. And when he’d found out the guy was actually a boxer, he’d wasted no time trying to make it to one of his matches. He wanted to see what the guy was like around civilians too.

He’d finally been able to make it through one without getting called away for an emergency. It was pretty impressive to watch, actually. Akira was good at what he did, didn’t even need to rely on NEXT abilities for it.

When it was all over, Akira the victor, Naoki couldn’t help but approach him. Akira looked far from happy about that, but it was whatever. Naoki was too curious to not try and talk to him. He was sure Akira would get over it, anyway.

“Hey there, you’re pretty good in the ring, aren’t you?” Perfect introduction.

Akira frowned at him. “...I’ve never seen you around here before.”

Naoki blinked a few times, that wasn’t the reply he expected. “Ah yeah, I’ve only caught parts of fights before this… This was the first full one I’ve seen! You’re always impressive from what I do catch, though.”

“Thanks, I guess…” Akira frowned. “Why the sudden interest, then?”

“I saw some hostage situation a while back on Hero TV Live… They talked about some boxing match turning into a hostage situation.” Naoki rubbed the back of his head, hopefully this would come across as believable. “I was curious about it and looked into who was boxing… Tried to catch some of your matches and some of the other guy’s matches.”

Akira scoffed. “Of course that’s how… Heroes and their bullshit is good for something, I guess.”

“Not a fan of heroes, huh?” Naoki rose an eyebrow. “There a reason for that?”

“They’re everywhere and covered in gaudy ads. It’s easy to get tired of them.” He made a face. “I’d be happy if Hero TV just got canceled already.”

Alright, that told Naoki basically everything he needed to know. Akira disliked heroes for a reason and he doubted anything he said would change that. Made the fact Naoki was the best-of-the-best when it came to heroes and this was sure to be a disaster…

Yet he didn’t even think of abandoning his attempt to learn more about Akira.

“That’s different, most people love the heroes, at least one of them.” Naoki took a step closer. “I almost wanna get to know you better, figure out what about you keeps you from liking even one of them.”

“There’s not some deep reason or anything.” Akira frowned at him. “If you wanna hang out with me just for that, it’ll be a waste of your time.”

“I also wanna see what you do to get so tough. You do great in the ring, so I can’t help but be curious.” He hoped that sounded convincing enough…

Akira stared at him for a few minutes, the frown on his face not changing. “...Give me your number then. If you really think it’s that interesting, I’ll call you when I feel like it.”

Naoki grinned from ear to ear, pulling out a pen and grabbing Akira’s arm. “I don’t have paper on me, so I hope you don’t mind if I put in on here.”

“Whatever, just hope I don’t wash it off before I call you.”

 

**Section 3: Dislike**

Akira had taken the time to call Naoki and the two had started talking a lot more often… There was just one think Akira really disliked about the whole set up… It was the fact Naoki would often duck out of plans and randomly hang up on him. It was like getting closer was pointless.

He kicked the ground with a curse, Naoki had just cancelled plans and hung up on him  _ again _ . Why did he put up with it, again? He really should just start ignoring him, he had better people he could hang out with! Like Tamaki and… Nobu, kinda… Maybe his coach…?

Okay, so he had one better person he could hang out with.. And she was usually pretty busy… But still! It’d be better to have nothing planned than to have none out of ten plans fall through… Probably.

He shoved his phone in his pocket with a huff. Guess he should just head home before anything else went wrong. Last thing he needed tonight was things to get worse… Though maybe thinking that was his mistake.

As soon as he stepped out of the bar, someone was pressing a gun to his head. The second time in three months.  _ Great. _ His luck in the ring might be great right now, but outside of it it was totally shit.

“Can we not do this? Can you mug someone else or hold someone else hostage?” He sent the person a glare. “I’m really not in the mood.”

They pressed the gun against his head harder. “You think you should be joking around right now, tough guy?!”

“I’m not joking around, I’m serious!” Akira really just wasn’t the smartest when it came to avoiding death, it seemed. “Leave me the hell alone--”

Before he could even finish telling the person off, they were being flung to the ground and an arm wrapped around his waist. If his gut feeling told him anything, this was basically a repeat of the boxing match gone wrong.

“Look who it is again, the guy who tried to play hero but said he didn’t!” There was the stupid King of Heroes, grinning at him as the police took the suspect into custody. “Maybe you’re just looking to get saved now.”

“I’m only here because my shitty friend ditched me, don’t flatter yourself.” Akira pushed on the other man’s arm and he was released.

He frowned, crossing his arms. “...Shitty?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Shitty. He always does this.”

“He’s probably just busy! I doubt he wants to ditch you all the time.” For some reason, this stupid hero was really serious about this. “He probably tries his best, you know?”

Akira scoffed. “Why do you even care?”

“I…” He straightened up, cleared his throat. “I don’t care! At all!” 

Akira rolled his eyes and turned on his heel. “Then leave me alone about it. It’s none of your business anyway.”

He started walking away with a frown, dammit… He hated this guy, right? More than he hated any other hero… But something about him was reminding him of Naoki now. It made it hard to really hate him, as much as he hated to admit it.

Maybe he just disliked him now. Yeah, disliked. That worked.

 

**Section 4: Like**

Naoki really liked Akira. Sure, he was grumpy and asocial and rude… But something about Akira just really stuck with Naoki. Maybe it was something about him being so against heroes, he didn’t know… But whatever.

He was doing what he could to make sure he spent more time with him (after having learned Akira thought him to be shitty), and it was going pretty well. Three weeks in a row of at least one of their meetups being finished. He’d say that was pretty good.

And today he was finally watching one of Akira’s boxing matches through for the first time since, well, since he’d first done it! Good thing crime hadn’t been too crazy recently… It was cool to see it all the way through.

As soon as it was over, Naoki wasted no time making his way to Akira. His friend had lost this time and was obviously still reeling from that, but… He’d still had fun watching Akira try, anyway.

“Good job up there!” Naoki smiled at him as Akira sort of slumped forward onto him. “...is that comfortable? You have to lean over a lot to do that.”

Akira let out a grumble about being tired and pissed, but didn’t say much more. He was so exhausted… Naoki just kind of wanted to drag him home and tuck him into bed.

He pat his shoulder. “Come on big guy, you aren’t gonna win them all. Especially not when you’re going based off raw power alone and not NEXT ability.”

“That guy is just a human, Naoki…”

“So if you’d used your NEXT ability you’d definitely have had a leg up!” Naoki continued to pat his head. “But instead it got to be a close fight.”

“I’d rather have destroyed him.” Akira looked up at him with something between a pout and a frown.

“Well too bad for you, then.” Naoki rolled his eyes. “You lost. Only place you can go from here is up.”

“I’d rather have just plateaued at pretty great…” He huffed. “Now my coach is gonna be on my case about even more training.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“I’ll be busier and you’ll duck out on our hangouts again soon enough…” Akira began to explain as if it was obvious. “We’ll basically be strangers when that happens.”

“No we won’t! We can still call each other every once and a while…”

“If our schedules don’t conflict.” Every word out of Akira’s mouth made Naoki want to slap him. “You have a habit of hanging up on me.”

“I don’t mean to…” Naoki sighed, going from patting Akira’s back to wrapping his arms around the taller man. “It just kinda happens.”

“Well, whatever.” Akira pulled away from Naoki upon feeling Naoki’s arms around him. “I need to get home. See you around.”

 

**Section 5: Indifference**

Akira had found himself becoming more and more indifferent to a number of things. More indifferent to losses in the ring, more indifferent to Naoki bailing on their plans, and even indifferent to heroes. Now, most of that was fine, but… He didn’t like why he was becoming so indifferent to heroes.

He’d run into trouble more often than he would like to admit since meeting Naoki, and every damn time a hero had to save him. Nine times out of ten? It was the one that happened to remind him of Naoki… What kinda luck was that?

“Again…” Akira sighed as once again when he was set down by the hero. “...I really should remember what you’re called if this is gonna happen so much.”

“What…?” He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t even know what I’m called?!”

“I don’t like heroes…” Akira crossed his arms and looked away. “...Or I guess didn’t. Hard to dislike the people who keep saving my ass.”

“Well, that’s good enough for me.” He pointed to himself. “Does that mean you’re starting to like me?”

Akira shrugged. “...More indifferent to you than anything.” 

“Well, I’ll take it, I guess…” Rubbing the back of his head, he took a step closer. “But I’ll keep working at getting you to like me.”

“Good luck with that.” Akira rolled his eyes. “You’re too much for me to ever like you.”

“That’s what you think.”

“...Uh-huh.” Akira shook his head and turned away. “I’m leaving now. Go save some damsel in distress.”

“But I already saved you today!”

Akira looked back, shooting him a glare. “S… Shut up!”

 

**Scene 6: Love**

Naoki was in love. It was hard for him to really say that, especially seeing as who it was, but there was no way around it. He was in love with Akira Miyamoto, someone who had hated his alter ego until recently. The issue now, though, was the question of if he told Akira or not.

They were sitting together at the bar, no words being spoken. Now would be a good a time as any… If he could just build up the guts to say it. Wouldn’t do him any good to try and have to cover it up. Akira wouldn’t give him the time of day again if he did.

Alright… He could do this.

“Akira, I need to tell you something.” His words sounded so loud in the quiet bar.

The man looked at him. “What is it?”

Naoki swallowed hard, gesturing for Akira to lean closer. “I don’t want anyone else hearing this… Only you’re supposed to know.”

Akira sighed, but leaned in. “If you scream in my ear, I’m smashing my glass over your head.”

He sucked in a breath. “I’m…”

_ I’m in love with you. _

“I’m a hero.”


End file.
